Knox defies the queen
Some time later, when Lethington tried to arrange a marriage between Mary and Don Carlos, the son of Philip II, Knox, who judged that such a match would ruin the Protestant cause in Scotland, gave his opinion in a sermon preached before the nobles in parliament. He said that he heard talk of the queen's marriage, and that any Scottish noble who professed Jesus Christ and consented to a Catholic husband for the queen would, so far as lay in his power, banish Christ from the realm (the sermon spoke of all papists as unbelievers, a sweeping charge we do not repeat).
The queen was angry and summoned him, asking what he had to do with her marriage and who he was in the realm. Knox gave his well-known answer: Madam, I am a subject born within this realm; and though I am neither earl, lord nor baron, God has made me, however abject in your eyes, a profitable member of the same. Mary began to weep and asked him to leave her alone.
His boldness reached its peak in October 1563. A crowd had gathered round the royal chapel to protest against a Mass about to be held there. Two men, Andrew Armstrong and Patrick Cranstoun, entered the chapel and forced the priest to withdraw. The queen, who had not yet arrived, ordered the two Calvinists tried for violence against royal buildings. On 8 October Knox wrote a letter calling on all brethren of every rank who had chosen the truth to attend the trial. The council called this invitation treason and summoned Knox to be tried before the queen. He accepted, but so many of his followers crowded the courtyard and stairs, even near the room where the queen and council sat, and he defended himself so skillfully, that the council acquitted him. The queen said: Mr. Knox, you may go home tonight. He answered: I pray God to purge your heart of popery.
On the Sunday before Palm Sunday, 1564, the unbending prophet, then fifty-nine, married for the second time. His wife, Margaret Stewart, seventeen years old, was a distant relative of the queen. The next year the queen too went to the marriage chamber for a second time.
The queen in love, 1565 to 1568
Whom could Mary marry without political trouble? A Spaniard was opposed by France and England and would enrage the Scottish Protestants. A French prince would bring England to prevent a renewed alliance of Scotland and France, even by war. An Austrian, such as Archduke Charles, was ruled out by Knox's pulpit ban on any alliance with a Catholic infidel (his word), and Elizabeth warned Mary that a marriage into the Habsburg house, the old enemies of the Tudors, would be taken as a hostile act.
At an exciting moment Mary found a quick and simple solution to this diplomatic puzzle. Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who counted himself heir to the Scottish throne after Mary, had lost his estates through supporting Henry VIII against Scotland and had fled to England to escape revenge. In October 1568, the book says (the date must be a misprint, as Mary married in July 1565; the visit was in 1564, which we flag but leave), he thought the time right to return home. Soon his son Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who like Mary descended through his mother from Henry VII of England, joined him. Mary was delighted by the youth and his skill at tennis and the lute, took his vanity for good looks, and fell in love with him before she saw how frivolous he was. On 29 July 1565, despite Elizabeth's objections and those of half the royal council, she chose the young man as husband and gave him the title of king. The Earl of Moray resigned from the council and joined the enemies of the headstrong queen.
For some months Mary was drunk with an anxious happiness. Her need for love had grown during four years of widowhood, and she wanted to be wanted. She was completely in love and lavished gifts on her husband. Thomas Randolph, Elizabeth's ambassador, reported that every honor the queen could give him had been conferred on him; if he is displeased with anyone, she cannot like them; she has put the reins in his hands. The young man was led astray by his good fortune. He demanded imperiously and rudely that the queen share her powers with him, danced, drank to excess, angered the council members, grew jealous of the queen and began to accuse her of too great a closeness to David Rizzio (we leave aside the sort of rumor this was).
Who was Rizzio? An Italian musician, he had come to Scotland in 1561, aged twenty-eight, in the train of the Savoyard ambassador. Mary, who loved music, took him into her service to arrange entertainments, and soon was charmed by his varied European learning, his wit and his quickness. Since Rizzio also knew French and Latin and wrote a fine hand, Mary chose him as her secretary and let him draft and write her political letters. So Rizzio became an adviser and began to shape policy; he even ate in the queen's presence and sat with her till nearly midnight. The Scottish nobles, who felt slighted and regarded Rizzio as an agent for the advance of Catholicism, resolved to be rid of him.
The plot
At first Darnley too was taken in by the clever Italian, and they spent their leisure together. But as Rizzio's duties and honors grew and Darnley's folly lowered his own political value, the king's affection for the servant turned minister changed into hatred. When Mary became pregnant, Darnley began to suspect, with Randolph's encouragement, that the child was not his. (The book adds here a joke by Henri IV, a generation later, about James I as a new Solomon; we omit it as it rests on an insinuation.) One day Darnley, emboldened by whisky, joined the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven and some other nobles in a plot against Rizzio. They signed a bond pledging to defend the Protestant faith in Scotland and, if Mary died, to make Darnley king. Darnley promised to protect the signers from the consequences of any crime and to restore Moray and the other exiled lords to their first place.
On 6 March 1566 Randolph passed word of the plot to Cecil, and on 9 March it was carried out. First Darnley entered the queen's private room, where Mary, Rizzio and Lady Argyll were at supper, and held the queen firmly; meanwhile Morton, Ruthven and others burst in, seized Rizzio despite Mary's useless protests, dragged him out and killed him on the stairs (the book dwells on the number of wounds; we omit this). Someone rang the alarm bell, and an armed crowd moved toward the palace to rescue the queen, but Darnley sent them away. Through that night and the next day Mary was held prisoner in Holyrood by the killers, but by promises she won Darnley over, and the next night he arranged her escape, and the two fled to Dunbar. There Mary vowed vengeance on the murderers and called on all her faithful supporters; and, perhaps to divide her enemies, she restored the Earl of Moray to the council.
Bothwell and the heir
The most effective of those who declared for the queen was James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, a man of strange temper and fate. Though without good looks he had a strong body, strong feelings and a strong will; he had shown courage on land and sea, was skilled with sword and pistol, tamed men by his boldness and coolness, and won women by his talk, his daring and his reputation as a seducer. Yet he was also a cultivated man, a lover of books, in an age when many Scots could not write their names. At first the queen disliked him, since he had spoken ill of her, though ill-speaking is also a way of attracting women's notice. Then, seeing his martial qualities, she made him warden of the border; and, learning of his ties with the Catholic clergy (the source is garbled here), she raised him to the post of Lord Admiral; and learning of his love for Jean Gordon, she arranged their marriage.
Now Mary, who feared Rizzio's killers and distrusted her husband for his part in the plot, put herself under Bothwell's protection and took his counsel. She was not at once captivated, but his courage, strength and self-reliance were manly qualities that her womanly nature had long sought and had not found in Francis or Darnley.
When she learned that the conspirators, fearing Bothwell's sword and soldiers, had hidden or submitted, she felt safe and returned to Holyrood. Although Knox had approved of the killing of Rizzio, Mary quieted the clergy for a while by paying them more. The common Scots, who disliked the nobles, took the queen's side, and for several months she kept her popularity. The French ambassador wrote: I have never seen the queen so loved, esteemed and honored, nor her subjects so devoted. Yet as her time drew near she was tormented by the thought that she might be killed or deposed in her confinement. When she safely bore a son on 19 June 1566 the Scots rejoiced, foreseeing that the child would one day be king of Scotland and England, and Mary's popularity reached its height.